Today my 12 year old came to me to watch a you tube video with him and made me cry. ​

Last year my husband and I took the leap to take the boys out of traditional school and do a bit of exploring across the sea and across the continent. Traveling to to Europe and from the west coast to the now, the east. We enrolled the boys into Calgary's CBeLearn program. This program lets the boys follow along with the Alberta Educational Curriculum through weekly online lessons facilitated by teachers. It allows them to focus on how they will spend their day and what they want to focus on and when. They submit their work by the due date specified and move on to the next week.​It has been a real change for all of us, mostly me probably. It leaves me feeling anxious and I am constantly in a state of questioning my self. "I am doing enough to keep them on tract.?" Probably. "Am I doing too much for them?" Maybe. "Are they getting enough exercise?" Perhaps. "Am I doing enough to keep them socialized?" I could certainly do more.

But today, after O. and I had finished up a critical reading assignment and submitted it for the deadline on Monday, he came to me to watch this You Tube Video by Prince Ea.

And Wow! It made me cry. Is this what you are watching on You Tube in your spare time, when I am asking you to go do something more productive than sit around and watch videos?" I asked him. The video was incredibly powerful really hit home to what we, as parents, are really doing with our children's lives and futures in two ways.​1. That critical reading we had just finished, was Ray Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder" about a man who goes back in time to kill a dinosaur and his slightest actions, change the course of the world, and this video is about humans whose large actions today are changing the future of the world.

and

2. Maybe the school system, that I worry so much about pleasing, has got it all wrong.

Okay, so point number 1. I had just spent the 2 weeks trying to get this child to read this story. He is stubborn and not one to really enjoy the work it takes to read. To really sink into writing, to pick it apart for it's complexity. To ask the questions, what is the plot?, the theme? the style of this writing? And most importantly , what is the message ? And here my child brought this video to me to watch with him. A video that desperately pleads to us viewers to understand our actions and what it has done and is doing to our future, exactly what the story was trying to say. Yeah, so the messages were the same; get your fucking shit together because your actions matter! But this video made me cry and really feel the desperation and the story didn't. My 12 year old son, had been listening to the same message and already got it!

and

Point Number 2.I was missing the point, that the system of the school is missing the point. The real message is not if you understand the the style of a story written on June 15, 1952. But the real message is : get your fucking shit together because your actions matter! Our real concern should not be if he gets a good grade on understanding the content of the story. That content is already out there, delivered to him in a way that he understands and he relates to. Maybe in his grandfather's time Ray Bradbury's story would have been thought of an appropriate way to relate information and messages. But that was in a time when the class room was structured around a place to train children to produce, to manufacture, to be in a factory or an institution. These kids will never fit into an institution. They will have to be creative thinkers, using technology to get their messages out They should be learning video editing and making rap songs ad how to make a website and how to create / make / utilize fundraising platforms for their ideas and inventions and creations. They will need to learn design skills and how to be entrepreneurs. Why waste their time, our valuable, precious time with the style of a 1952 writing?

and that

Maybe somehow when I am not focusing on him getting that last assignment done before the weekend, when I am sitting at my desk working away at my drawings and casually speaking to him, these issues are matters that have started to matter to him, and maybe that is why this message, this video connected and really resonated with him. It was already part of him.

I know that these kiddos are conscious of this the planet that they are being left. I know they are made and I know they are frustrated and I know they see their parents not making big enough changes to help them in what really matters in their futures. But we too are confused, we and somewhat feel helpless against a system, a society, a culture that has been so ingrained in our actions, our thoughts. We know no other means of survival, but to continue doing what we are doing. That is why we continue to put them in school, to follow a system that teaches them the skills of production instead of the skills of being conscious, being aware, being creative and empathetic. We continue to do what we have done. But somehow, it all has to stop or I am afraid, it will all stop.

So yeah, my 12 year old is smarter than me, and that realization has made be grow and blossom a little more today.

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Bio

So, something about me. Married with two beautiful boys, 14 and 12, So yes, I have entered the stage of mommy hood where I am feeling completely useless but simultaneous know that I am still needed, but desperately trying to figure out how. I also make drawings, and prints, that used to be about motherhood but now are most recently about the ecology, the environment and the world that I am leaving to those kiddos of mine. Sometimes I show these works and sometimes I make them and put them away in drawers.I called this blog section May, because good things happen in May. Flowers bloom, the grass gets green, it is the Full Flowing Moon and there is a long weekend! Mothers Day is in May and my birthday month! This year will be my 45th year, so I like to think that I am only half way bloomed. So here's to May and Blooming!